War Story
During the course of this morning I stumbled onto a particular arrangement of notes while playing my guitar. This in and of itself is not completely out of the ordinary; I play often and every once in a while something that doesn't sound terrible emerges and catches my fancy. It's a very intuitive process, the way I write music, but in this particular instance, the experience has come out a little... oblique, and I want to discuss it. As my cat isn't terribly adept at these sorts of probing, speculative discourses, this avenue will have to suffice for the time being.
What got me was how it sounded, the quality of it. I enjoyed it. The descending line in a minor key gave it a sort of gravity, a demand of importance, of seriousness and weight, and this was followed by a deep rising which I felt as a movement of address to this. A challenge, and the will to meet and surmount that challenge. Not a personal challenge, but a greater one that is faced by a people, not an individual. A task that must be met and upheld, lest some degree of ruin result. This is how this relatively simple arrangement of notes made me feel - these are the things it caused me to think.
But I quickly realized: I don't feel that way.
I mean, I don't feel it is a reflection of something I was already feeling. It's more a representation of something I know exists rather than something I feel personally. It's a story, not an expression of my state of being. For some reason, this made me feel like I shouldn't, or couldn't keep writing with this as a point of inspiration.
I suppose this is because my music has traditionally been intended to reflect inner parts of myself in some way. Empathy is important in the writing process, for me. Imagining is not quite enough (though certainly possible). I think it might come from some weird notion of authenticity (albeit an authenticity only I would ever have any awareness of, but this is more than enough); imagination alone would produce something formulaic, manipulated for a specified effect, rather than a catharsis resulting from an adept, accurate interpretation of emotional or mental truths.
These truths are not necessarily my own - I have stepped outside my own experiences to write before, but, to some extent I feel I write best when I can identify with the experiences I am writing about, even if they are not directly my own.
I am not fighting a war, nor do I know anyone personally who is fighting one. I know people with struggles, but I don't know of anyone engaged in a struggle of the magnitude that this piece of music associated itself with in my mind. This writing right here is about the most serious struggle I have in my own life right now. Much of the time I am pretty grateful for this, but I am very aware of the part of myself which feels most secure with itself when its environment is patently not secure, and needs to be dealt with. Conflict breeds creativity, and provides purpose.
As I listened to these notes coming from my carefully crafted, curvaceous box of wood and slender metal strings, my immediate reaction was that I thought it would be disingenuous to try and interpret any part of my present circumstances in their light - my experience doesn't merit them. Though, I do remember times when I would have felt otherwise, and I certainly believe that others' definitely do merit them. So I ask: Is the music just for me?
Am I writing a lexicon of me, or is the music for more than just that? Honestly, the endeavor has been primarily for the former reason: Music maps out my life, or parts of it at least, and I often hope that it will function as a system of symbols that certain people may one day understand and be moved by because they understand the system as I do.
But as with any system of symbols, the perusers make of it what they will, and their products can be powerful, and so meaningful, even without any consideration of the author. I take advantage of this truth often. So, I can't help but conclude that if I wrote something with which I couldn't directly and eminently identify with, it would still potentially have value. I definitely can't deny this, and have no desire or need to.
There's another weird notion going along with it, though: If I am going to produce, say, a sort of experiential narrative (through music) about something which I have no first hand experience, do I have a "right" to really do so? Should I write about things I don't really understand? This song, it reminds me of struggles which are beyond those I've experienced. Might people who have experienced struggles on that scale be better able to judge how the story should be told? How it should sound? What the take home messages should be?
Perhaps I could use this sort of thing as an impetus behind an effort to educate myself. Perhaps these sorts of experiences are things I could look into, and cultivate a kind of personal relationship with. This is how authors of novels do things, after all. And while I wouldn't have a direct, personal experience of the things about which the story is told, I will have a personal experience of the learning, the feeling in response to that knowledge, and of the telling.
This is a sign I send to myself: You can change the way you write. The reasons you write. You can diversify your methods (and probably should). This relates in a roundabout way to the previous entry in this journal - representing is important, but if its all you are engaged in, that which is being represented itself becomes stale, and eventually, empty. I must return to being present in my own life before I can speak about just what it is, what it means. This might mean the message changes, but the trepidation of not knowing what changes in messages might come is preferable to tirelessly clinging to anachronistic ones.
In short form for myself: Write your war story.
posted by Jasper C. Coligny at 6:16 AM
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